Finally diving into my L5. I think it's broken out of the box

Hardware Librem 5
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So I got my L5 back in April, but didn’t give it proper attention until now. I turned it on and opened a few apps, but never set it up or used it. Back in the box. Really busy with career stuff, no time for fun.

This week I started the plunge and am working to make it my primary phone!

There’s a lot of lacking features, even after the latest updates. But I am cool with this for the most part. I love the concept and I am totally willing to let some things slide.

However, I am on the second strike in terms of actual brokenness. And I am really curious to know if people are having any similar woes that aren’t just because features are still in development. Actual physical and basic component issues.

Strike one was actually when I did look at it back in April. When the screen is on, there is always a white dot at the bottom, near the bevel and off-center. It’s not a dead pixel – it’s about half a centimeter in diameter, brightest at the center and fading outwards. it’s definitely an imperfection in the screen, like how you would imagine some backlighting shining through.

At the time, I accepted that this would be something that I would just have to live with. A compromise for having this unique and long-awaited device.

Well now it appears something else is faulty. And I’ve upgraded the first issue to an actual strike and not just an oh well.

The Volume Down button doesn’t work! I press Volume Up, and the volume goes up as expected. Volume down… does nothing. Searched but didn’t see anyone mentioning a similar problem. I thought maybe the physical buttons can be mapped, and Volume Down just got unmapped. But I don’t see anything that controls this, so, kind of a bummer. Even if I hit the volume up and try to grab the scrollbar that pops up to turn it down instead, I can’t. I have to go into the settings and do it there. It sucks.

So yeah. There doesn’t appear to be any actual physical damage, and I certainly haven’t done anything to cause these things. Anyone else have similar lack of quality control?

Just wanna get some opinions and feedback, maybe there’s some fixes for this or known issues before I go and contact their support. I have to see if I can even get a replacement still or not, since it’s been a handful of months since I received it.

Cheers

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I don’t know what’s causing the problem with the volume, but you might consider just reflashing the OS now, before you make a lot of changes to the phone (which will be lost during flashing).

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It’s still under warranty though.

For the first issue, I would take a photo of the screen and discuss with Purism Support. You could post the photo here too. A picture is worth a thousand words.

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No, contact Purism support for your Librem 5 hardware issues.

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OK. Thanks for the replies. I took the picture, here it is.

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I really haven’t done much with the phone yet, so I am going to try Flashing it as suggested and see if that remedies the Volume issue.

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These look like hardware defects either from manufacturing or from mishandling during shipment. I did notice on my unit that the volume rocker would trigger a volume adjustment easier in one direction than the other, but it has self-adjusted from use. Your case seems different and you should go through support as others have mentioned.

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I contacted support and they want me to send them the phone. So looks like I’ll be doing that.

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Let us know later if your issues have been resolved by them once you receive it back.

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Just adding that my volume-down button was always almost non-working as well. I have to press quite hard and kind of in the middle rather then down and that sometimes work and sometimes I accidently trigger volume-up instead. So you are not alone :slight_smile:

If anybody knows about a DIY video/manual how to fix it, please let me know. It is too late for me to claim a repair at purism.

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You can disassemble the Librem 5 and carefully clean the relevant component (1:04):

Otherwise, you can claim an out-of-warranty repair instead:

https://docs.puri.sm/Contact.html

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I forgot to respond to this thread, sorry.

The support received from Purism for these issues was very good. I sent in the phone and they sent it back repaired. I am confident the phone I got back was the same one I sent in. The process was easy. I forget now how long it took. A few weeks probably. I live in Canada and had to pay shipping.

Big Thank You to Purism’s support team for fixing my L5!!

I am still using the phone as my “daily driver.” Here is some stuff about that:

I mostly use Firefox for everything, since its the only real app that can be installed. I find most of the apps in the store to be worthless. Anytime I try to compile/install anything good like Discord I am plagued by dependency issues. The repo basically has no packages on them at all and so I have to go and get all the dependencies myself. Rough. So I use Discord (and others) in Firefox instead. But I cant seem to get location and microphone working in Firefox even though it obviously works in other places.

In general, all the apps that come installed are really basic. Even just setting an alarm is too basic.

The Text app has some bugs too. Sometimes conversations disappear (especially if I’ve sent an image, which I can’t seem to get working). Or texts that were already received months ago appear merged with a new text. Sometimes from completely different contacts.
I would love to put a VNC server on the phone so I can answer texts n stuff from my PC. Afaik this is supposed to be available in the next OS release.

The phone cant run a whole day on a single charge. Even if it’s just, sitting at my desk not being used at all and without anything running (especially Firefox). Granted, its still a computer in a phone form factor… it doesn’t have the crazy memory management and energy saving tricks that other phones have. So I forgive.

These aren’t real complaints. I still think its a very special phone and I still continue to use it. I expect these things to improve, I am sure a lot of it is on the software side of things.
And I haven’t put as much time into the phone as I could. For instance, whenever it restarts my screen goes back to 200% even though I had it at 100%. I am sure if I were to just go and edit a config somewhere I could make the choice of 100% permanent.

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The only Firefox mobile for Linux it is for Android, so you are using a Firefox Desktop for Gnu Systems which is extremely heavy for the L5.

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Yeah, it makes sense. I have a habit of always closing it when I put my phone back in my pocket or wherever – it makes a huge difference in saving battery. I keep about 4-5 tabs that are dedicated for things I use regularly enough, and then any tabs I open beyond that get closed also.

Though just this week actually I get a weird message when I open Firefox again. Let me look …

“Failed to read the configuration file. Please contact your system administrator.” … when I hit OK Firefox closes, then reopens. But all my tabs are there and I don’t notice anything wrong.

It persists after a phone restart too. Haven’t had time to poke around for a reason/resolution. My life is a mess haha.

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10 posts were split to a new topic: Firefox is malware?

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⇒ Firefox-esr after update Failed to read config file and specifically Firefox-esr after update Failed to read config file - #8 by Sarcasmo220

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Ah cool of you to point me in that direction, thanks. I could have just looked myself, haven’t done it yet. But thank you. That extra couple of seconds to get to my tabs is like an eternity xD xD

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Have you tried installing LibreWolf? Since it’s more security focused (and actually disables some features for that reason) I figured it might be a little lighter. That’s just a guess though, I haven’t used it heavily so I’d be interested if anyone sees a performance difference. I was able to get it to install and it runs. It is a bit of a pain to install, you need to go to their website and follow those instructions, no simple “sudo apt install” unfortunately.

I don’t think I was ever able to get to the ‘app store’ thing to actually work, it rarely (or never?) loaded fully. So I’ve always installed from CLI. Since it’s Linux you can install lots of stuff if you’re willing to do the CLI thing; the real question is whether it runs well.

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I tried LibreWolf on desktop once. Not on the phone. Could give it a try :slight_smile:

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I got that notice for the first time last night after updating the software.

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